NEW FORCES  IN THE WORLD'S  LIFE         73
culture is now armed with the weapons of civiliza-
tion. The style of life is changing, as is the type
of popular interests and the direction-of public
consciousness. A quality-culture was connected
with aristocracy (not in the social sense, of course).
And this aristocratic element is now threatened
with extinction. The cultural elite is under-
going a regular pogrom. This is the case both
in Soviet Russia and in Hitlerist Germany. That
Germany which once confessed a regular cult of
the intellectual, the professor, the philosopher,
the university, a cult which was often exaggerated
and almost comic, has now ceased completely to
respect these things and is ready to wipe them
off the slate. The masses demand that men of
thought and cultural creativeness serve them,
fulfil " social" orders and commands. Thinkers
are feeling the cruel results of the dictatorship of
dominant orthodoxy and dogmatics and are forced
to accept the prevailing symbolism. In Italy
where the dictatorship of thought is comparatively
gentle, fascist youth not long ago destroyed the
library of the greatest living Italian philosopher,
Benedetto Croce, simply because he wished to
retain his liberty of thought and would not accept
the creed of Fascism. These new dictatorships
demand a far sterner orthodoxy of men of
creative thought than ever was demanded in the
middle ages. The forms taken by this demand for